The city that’s known for its unique heritage of urban living and multiculturalism joins the likes of Paris, Cairo, Brussels, and Rome in the UNESCO list

The 600-year-old walled city of Ahmedabad presents an interesting duality of sorts. Traditional medieval houses, with intricately carved wooden facades, coexist with modern architecture; centuries-old craft practices move in perfect tandem with state-of-the-art technology, ancient wisdom is still given utmost importance, but is viewed from the prism of contemporary issues and ideas.

It is to acknowledge this interesting amalgamation of the old and the new that UNESCO has awarded Ahmedabad the World Heritage City status, making it the first Indian city to be given this recognition. It now joins the likes of Paris, Vienna, Cairo, Brussels, Rome, and Edinburgh in the list. The decision was taken on July 8 at the 41st session of the World Heritage Committee meeting at Krakow, Poland where Ahmedabad’s nomination was supported by 20 countries.

Gujarat Arts & Science College, popularly and earlier known as Gujarat College, is one of the oldest educational institution of India, founded in 1860 in Ahmedabad as a government-run educational institute. It was established as regular college in 1879.

Ahmedabad is often compared with the historic towns of Melaka in Malaysia and Lyon in France, which are known for their multiculturalism and where powerful merchant associations played an important role as patrons of art and culture. However, what makes it unique from the other cities is that no matter which regime took over the city in the last six centuries—be it the Solankis or the Gujarat Sultanate, the Mughals or the British—an unbroken chain of knowledge was passed down with each succession. This is something that continues till today. In fact, this was one of the key factors behind UNESCO’s decision to list Ahmedabad as a World Heritage City.

“The historic architecture of the city exhibited an important interchange of human values over its span of time, which truly reflected the culture of the communities that were the important inhabitants of the city,” mentions an article on the UNESCO website. Also, the city has stood for “peace” and “unity”, and is one of the “finest examples of Indo-Islamic architecture and Hindu-Muslim art”, as Ruchira Kamboj, India’s permanent representative to UNESCO put it.

It was from his base at Sabarmati Ashram that Gandhi led the Dandi March also known as the Salt Satyagraha on March 12, 1930. In recognition of the significant influence that this march had on the Indian independence movement the Indian government has established the ashram as a national monument.

According to Deepthi Sasidharan, a museum heritage consultant and director, Eka Cultural Resources and Research, it is not just art and architecture but the traditions of craft, language and rituals that have also survived the shift of regimes. “However, these traditions have not remained unchanged. They are ever evolving. That is also something that UNESCO must have reflected on, while deciding on the heritage status.”

So, will this title change people’s perception of the city? “The domestic audience, in its everyday routine, doesn’t give due thought to our cultural assets. It is important that our cities get such a recognition so that these assets get more visibility,” says Vaibhav Chauhan, founding-member, Sahapedia, which recently launched the first phase of its museum mapping project across 10 Indian cities, including Ahmedabad. In his opinion, this will also prove to other cities that legacy and urban development can peacefully coexist. “If you ‘museum-ise’ everything and don’t let people interact or engage with it, then you are placing the city’s legacy in silos. In Ahmedabad, the opposite has happened,” he says.

Vikram Sarabhai’s vision for an exemplary school to mould the future managers of the nation materialized as Louis Kahn’s dream in red. At the outset, Balkrishna Doshi had been offered the commission to design the campus. Featured here: The Louis Kahn Plaza is flanked by faculty offices and lecture halls. Photo Courtesy: Harshan Thomson.

It is one of the few cities, where people have not been content with sitting on the legacy left behind by the Mughals or the British, but have been adding to it in the post-Independence era. In fact, a successful number of world-class institutions such as the National Institute of Design (NID) and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) have emerged in that period.

One of the pioneers of this post-Independence renaissance, of sorts, have been the Sarabhais. In the 1950s and 60s, Ambalal Sarabhai, one of the early modernizers of the textile mill, and his wife, Saraladevi, were at the centre of this creative burst engulfing the newly independent nation. Gira and Gautam, two of their eight children, founded the Calico Textile Museum, which continues to be a pilgrimage site for textile historians from around the world, while their Vikram set up the Indian Space Research Organisation. Their home became a retreat for European and American thinkers and artists such as Isamu Noguchi, Le Corbusier, John Cage, and Alexander Calder.

A family home in Ahmedabad turns into a beautiful narrative on the history of Indian art. The Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum is housed in two buildings including the 112-year-old ancestral property.

This industrial and artistic evolution of the city hasn’t ended there. It is being taken forward by citizens even today, making Ahmedabad a case study in heritage conservation and documentation led by the civil society. “The citizens are extremely proud of their heritage and are actively trying to institutionalise it. They have a ‘let’s go ahead and get it done’ kind of attitude,” says Sasidharan.

Whether it is the Sarabhais or the Lalbhais, who recently converted their family home into a museum to showcase the art collection of Kasturbhai Lalbhai, co-founder of Arvind Limited, each family is deeply rooted in the ethos of the city. “They have always been based in the city. It’s not like they have one home in Delhi, another in London. That comes with a lot of pride,” she says. Chauhan concurs: “People are doing whatever they can at their level. There are big private museums or humble endeavours such as the utensil museum. Usually museums are about objects, but in Ahmedabad, you will find museums about ideas, such as the Conflictorium. That makes the city a very interesting place to be in.”